Aladdin Review (Sega Genesis) (Retro WedNESday #12) (Also on NES, Game Boy)
Developer: Virgin Games
Publisher: Sega
Released: October 19, 1993
It was a damn cold day, February 14, 1994, at exactly 6:25:02pm when light snow was falling outside. For the historical meteorologist reading this, it wasn’t accumulating and I don’t know the dew point, but it was snowing nevertheless. My dad was outside chopping wood in the light snow, I know because I was watching him out the den window while sitting on the floor by a fireplace playing Aladdin on Sega Genesis because I rented it from Movie Gallery.
For my younger readers, Movie Gallery was a physical store you could go into and rent movies or games (don’t let the Movie in the name throw you off). It was like a library for interesting shit. You could rent for different day lengths and I usually went with five day rentals. Back then, and especially for a game like Aladdin, that meant you could actually beat the game. If the store was still open today, as it should be, that means after all the unskippable cutscenes and handholding instructions you could get through a game’s tutorial.
That’s one of the things I love, not just about Aladdin (which I swear, we’ll get to), but games in general back in the early and mid 90s. The games tended to get to the point right off the bat. They came with instruction manuals, which may or may not have tried to set up a story, but always included the controls for the game. That meant that the game could just start and you go on your own. They didn’t need to tell you how to move forward, or jump, or throw a punch or whatever. Games respected your time, largely, and respected your intelligence. Nowadays, developers think you’re stupid and need to be told “move the thumbstick to move, move the other one to look around.” Well, no shit Sherlock.
Games, like Aladdin (which we’re getting to) could have secrets and collectibles, but they didn’t fill an open world with a thousand icons to pad the playtime. They consisted of a handful of hand-crafted linear levels, and you played through them. The story, if there was one, took place in brief little scenes between levels. A lot of them you could beat in a few hours, or a day, or a weekend… however long it took you to quit sucking at jumping and dodging or killing enemies instead of getting hit by everyone that comes across the screen.
So, when I rented Aladdin, the Sega version, the superior version, I was able to complete it well within the rental time. Which meant more time to play another rented game and watch the rented movies a couple of times. Don’t ask what the other rented game was, because I don’t know. I remember Aladdin – cold – sitting by fireplace – dad chopping wood outside the window in some light snow. Already have the meteorologist sleuths up my ass about when it was snowing in Alabama in 1994, I’m not launching a separate investigation to remember what the other game was.
Anyway, Aladdin for Sega Genesis is an all-time banger of a platformer. Back then, a movie tie-in or adaptation carried some worry that game was possibly a cash grab and was going to suck. Obviously, every licensed game didn’t blow chunks, but a lot did. I’m looking at you Hook for SNES, you giant pile of suck. A classic movie produced a shitty licensed game while damn 7-Up, a sugary drink, gave us the great, licensed platformer Cool Spot (which I’ve already reviewed).
Now all that wasn’t said simply to backlink to Cool Spot for that sweet SEO juice, but rather because Aladdin reminds me a lot of Cool Spot. Unsurprisingly, it was also developed by Virgin Games. Aladdin is the better game, by far, but it looks amazing just like Cool Spot did. That game came out several months before Aladdin, and for that one I played the SNES version, but for a while it was the best-looking game my little seven-year-old eyes had seen. And think about the first part of that last sentence for a minute. Several months passed between the release of Cool Spot and Aladdin, both by Virgin Games. Different teams? Perhaps, but nevertheless look at today where Insominac spent over five years to produce… whatever the hell Wolverine is.
Then along came Aladdin and surpassed it (it being Cool Spot, in case the Wolverine note threw you off). It looked like a playable cartoon. No, it didn’t look like a damn cartoon movie (or sorry, animated film), but who expected it to? It’s a 2D platformer for Sega Genesis, not a 3D movie. Of course it didn’t have that level of visual fidelity. It still looked incredible though, and maintained the best-looking game title (to me, it’s my memory) until November 1994 when Donkey Kong Country came out and said “hold my banana.” Damn, there’s that sweet SEO banana juice.
The visuals can’t be overpraised enough, as the game really was amazing looking. Even today, the 16-bit visuals of Aladdin hold up tremendously well. Some people —or an esteemed institution of cultural relevancy designed as a website dressed as a clubhouse inside a Greek mythological castle — really like those 16-bit visuals.
Aladdin also shines in the sound department. The official soundtrack uses music from the movie and renders it in that glorious 16-bit FM synthesis style, or whatever it’s called (I’m not an audiophile). It still sounds amazing though, and the tunes are instantly recognizable. The first level has Prince Ali playing throughout, and once upon a time I knew the lyrics to that. Today, when I replay this, all I hear is the Prince Andrew Song… “Prince Andy, pedo is he, diddler of children…” and I love it.
It’s not just the music though, it’s also the sound effects. This game nails the movie vibe completely, and that wasn’t often the case for licensed games. And while talking about nailing the vibe, this goes back to the graphics, this game nails the movements too. It looks like the characters running, jumping and slashing. Yes, that could have been edited into the visual paragraph, but that’s not how I thought of it. But to tie it together, the running, jumping and slashing all produce great sound effects too. Ok, I exaggerated, the running and jumping don’t make a sound, but the slashing does, and that counts.
As we hit the 1000 word mark somehow, now would probably be a good time to talk about what actually makes a game though, and that would be the gameplay. While visuals and tunes elevate the experience, a game can still be fantastic if it looks like shit but plays well and is fun. And by that same token, a game can look amazing and play like a Karen in front of a cashier who wouldn’t honor the sticker price she casually slapped on it… which is just a wordy way of saying insufferable. Thankfully, Aladdin isn’t Hook, as it plays equally as well as it looks.
Platformers, especially 8-bit and in the case of Aladdin (Sega), 16-bit, need precision to work properly. They need to be fluid and responsive, but not floaty. Floaty jumping leads to frustration, leads to getting in trouble for potty mouth, leads to broken cartridge, leads to grounded from playing for a day or two. As luck would have it, Aladdin controls fine, so I didn’t get fussed at nor break the cartridge… which if you recall from the opening paragraph of this professional review, you’d know that’s a good thing because this was a rental.
But to cosplay as Lance Storm for a minute, a platformer can’t be floaty or deceptive. Aladdin is neither. If there’s a ledge that’s 15 pixels wide (or whatever), you can safely jump and land on it with ease. It’s not a hard jump that then needs you to land on exactly one half of a pixel otherwise you fall through the remaining 14 and a half while the game mocks you for failing.
Many games of this era, especially platformers, were notoriously difficult. That’s partly because developers didn’t think gamers needed a game to play itself in order for them to beat it, and to make up for the fact that the game was only 30 minutes long if you knew what the hell you were doing. Aladdin, I would say, in my expert opinion, having played it then and now, strikes a good balance. It wasn’t so easy as to just walk forward and occasionally jump, but it wasn’t bust your balls then kick you in the face while you lie there difficult either. It’s about a three on the difficulty scale, which to some games journalist today might as well be the equivalent of Dark Souls. In reality, if you could beat Mario and Sonic, you could beat this.
There’s about nine levels in this, more if you count the bonus levels which I obviously just didn’t. Each will probably take you anywhere from one to 20 attempts to complete; I don’t know what your skill level is. It’s not a long game, you can knock it out in a few hours or under an hour if you know what the hell you’re doing. If you’re the type that thinks Mixtape is game of the year, it might take you a month to beat if you even do.
For me, I love this game. I loved it then in 1994, and I love it now. I liked the movie too, but that’s subject for another day. I would say, and since it is my review am going to say, that Aladdin sits up amongst the upper echelons of Genesis gaming. It’s up there with Sonic, well above the steaming pile of shit that was Altered Beast (which I reviewed here, for more of that SEO vomit). And there are people who think Altered Beast was a good game? Yikes, talk about having zero taste.
I’m going out on a limb and saying Titan will decree this one five stars, exalted status. That’s partly because I know Titan, and also because I give it five stars and that’s just how it works around here.
If you’ve never played it, I urge you to put down Fortnite or Minecraft, or whatever the hell you’re playing (God forbid it’s Wolverine, and I know it isn’t Marathon), and give it a play. Like I said, it isn’t long, so you can play a real game and then get back to whatever mindless grinding modern gaming has you doing.
There are numerous ways to play this gem. You can bust out your Sega Genesis, or if you don’t have one you can buy a used one or buy a Hyperkin Megaretron HD or better Hyperkin RetroN 3 HD (plays NES, SNES and Genesis) and a physical copy of the game and play it how it was meant to be played. Those are Amazon affiliate links if you want to fund more decorations for the Halls and keep the lights on. You can also type it into Bing and play the game right in your browser, or download an emulator and sail the high seas if you so please. If you’re a legal beagle, I suggest you buy a system and a physical copy though, but that’s partly because it could benefit me.
Or you could just buy The Disney Lion King and Aladdin combo on any modern system for about $20. Your call.
Aladdin gets a five out of five: EXALTED.
This one triggering some nostalgia for ya? Check out my reviews of Sonic the Hedgehog on Genesis and Super Mario Bros. on NES, or browse the full Retro WedNESday archive. Also if you read the last one like a month ago, I said “next week we’re back on the SNES…” and well obviously that was a lie. Next week we’re back on the SNES.
